Episodes
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(Ep 26) Living in the Long Shadow with Author Suzanne Sherman
Author Suzanne Sherman discusses her new book Living in the Long Shadow: Surviving a Legacy of Mental Illness, growing up with a mother diagnosed with schizophrenia and who eventually died by suicide. You can learn more about Suzanne and her story at suzannesherman.com.
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(Ep 25) Another Saturday: The Children We Were with Filmmaker Julie DellaRipa
Award-winning filmmaker Julie DellaRipa discusses Another Saturday, growing up with a mother battling depression, becoming a caregiver far too young, and how storytelling helps us heal the children we once were.
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(Ep 24) Finding Peace and Joy with Diane Bell
Madness To Magic brings to listeners stories of real world encounters with what we all experience and yet feel shamed to keep silent. Embracing ALL of us is key to tapping into our own power to make all things possible. This episode of my podcast is with Diane Bell who is probably best known…
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(Ep. 23) The Secret to Getting Your Life Humming with Sheri Salata
Madness To Magic brings to listeners stories of real world encounters with what we all experience and yet feel shamed to keep silent. Embracing ALL of us is key to tapping into our own power to make all things possible.This episode of my podcast is with transformational entrepreneur of The…
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(Ep 22) Mental Illness in The Family: Author Marin Sardy Shares Insights
World Mental Health Day on October 10 with its theme of "Make mental health for all a global priority" couldn't be more appropriate during these times when mental health in the family and mental health as a society is suffering more than ever. Having been raised by a mom diagnosed with paranoid...
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(Ep 21) Self-love and Being Unapologetically Ourselves: Uga Carlini "Angeliena" Film Inspires
On Friday, October 8, 2021, multi-award winning filmmaker Uga Carlini's fiction feature "Angeliena" premieres on Netflix. It's a story about self-love and being 'good enough' and having dreams and caring for one another. It has characters you'll hiss at and the ones you'll cheer on. THIS is the...
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(Ep 20) From the Inside Out: Mental Health & Writing Therapy with Jennie Nash
On Thursday, September 1, 2021, the book, "Blueprint for a Book: Build Your Novel from the Inside Out" by Jennie Nash publishes. What a treat it was to chat with Jennie who has been my book coach and mentor for years and who has been instrumental in my own books getting written and published....
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(Ep 19) Caregiving for Mental Illness - SiriusXM DOCTOR RADIO SHOW
On Tuesday, April 6, 2021, I joined in as a guest on one of SiriusXM’s radio programs. DOCTOR RADIO included a segment on caregiving for mental illness, and its host Dr. Michael Aronoff interviewed me. Dr. Aronoff MD is Attending Psychiatrist on the Senior Staff of Lenox Hill Hospital and…
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(Ep 18)Mental Health Awareness Month: The Madness That's Making Us Not Who We Are Meant To Be
Warning: This episode is a bit of a RANT. It’s my own melting pot of everything from feeling enraged, sadness, disgust, hysterical: So many feelings swirling within me – Madness within due to the madness of our circumstances. . We’ve always been a screwed up society. Humans are flawed. But we…
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(Ep 17) When the strongest fall apart: Learning to find yourself again
This podcast is with someone I'm blessed to call my friend: Thom Brodeur. He's a self-made man, he's a caregiver, he's an entrepreneur who has risen to the ranks of corporate CEO and now is head of his own beauty and fashion empire. He is both "Beauty Boss" and "Mister Congeniality" and he is a...
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(Ep16)-Dealing with grief: Self-care and living your own life
The very thing I preach about in this podcast - CAREGIVING - is the very thing I wasn’t doing -- for myself. It's why I said "fuck it" to posting a Christmas episode: I just needed a time out. Something's been a bit "off" for a while with me. I only just realized what it was; hence, the reason…
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(Ep15)Thanksgiving: Celebrating Dysfunctional Families with Friends
This episode of my podcast is so fitting for Thanksgiving week. My crazy soul sister Sylvia, one of my dearest firends, shares her story of having grown up in a dysfunctional family, surrounded by madness, and the syncronicities and commonalitles and plain old divine intervention that has come…
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(Ep 14)Mental Illness Awareness Week: Resilience, Strength & Self-Care
This episode so speaks to Mental Illness Awareness Week. I interview Patty, a soul sister, who, like me, has experienced three different versions of mental illness: Her mom, her sister, and herself. Patty and I talk about mental illness stigma and shame and family dysfunction. We also get very...
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(Ep 13) Interview with My Therapist: Shattering Stigmas, Sharing Secrets
Wow. This podcast – with me interviewing my beloved shrink (licensed professional clinical counselor Lynn Drost) whom I had seen for well over a decade – had me BOTH tongue-tied and unable to stop talking! This woman saved my life. The fear I had in spilling my secrets to her were two-fold: To do...
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(Ep 12) The Power of Place: Rockhaven Sanitarium and Wonder Women
Today's podcast is with "Wonder Woman" Joanna Westerholm Linkchorst. Joanna is the spirit behind the effort toward saving Rockhaven Sanitarium. Rockhaven is a place that was built in 1923 by a woman RN named Agnes Richards who found a better way to care for women with mild mental & nervous…
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(Ep11) You Are Enough: A Mother Daughter Relationship Podcast
“Sometimes people with the issue don’t know they have the issue, so how are you supposed to get somebody help who doesn’t think they need it?” - Great insight from Jeanne, the daughter in this mother-daughter special episode of my podcast. Jenny, her mom, is one of my first friends in life. We…
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(Ep10)Greatest caregiver of crazy: Remembering my Papa
This one’s all about a caregiver of crazy who is for me the single greatest male influence in my life - my Papà – Antonino Milana. Today’s the anniversary of his death - 29 years ago. I can’t believe he’s been gone that long. I was only 24 when he died unexpectedly. Not a day goes by that I don't...
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(Ep9) Mother's Day And Mental Illness: Missing Out On A Mom
Hello again! Thanks for joining me. With this being Mother’s Day, today’s podcast is all about moms. Or at least my mom. Mother’s Day is hard for me. The fact that it falls in the very same time frame as Mental Health Awareness month makes it even harder. Anne Lamott one of my favorite authors…
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(Ep 8) Celebrating National Siblings Day (sort of)
Yup. Today is, indeed, National Siblings Day. We're supposed to be honoring our brothers and sisters on this day. I'm paying homage to mine with this podcast. Sort of. Those of you who have siblings might understand why. Thanks for listening! And let me know if you have a story to tell and would...
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(Ep 7 Part 2)Siblings: Living & Loving Crazy
Thanks for coming back to hear part 2 of my conversation with my brother Ross. Today’s podcast is a continuation of the last episode. It’s been enlightening for me – and it’s dawned on me that this is really the first time my brother and I – NOT being in the thick of madness with our mom or our...
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(Ep 7 Part 1)Siblings: Living & Loving Crazy
"...It’s a whole different world…." My brother Rosario is definitely right. I listen back to some of these stories and think WOW what we were going thru and hiding from the world…? And then I think WOW what must you listeners be thinking? LOL While there’s much more to this podcast – so much more...
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(Ep6) Leaving Neverland and The "S" Words
I hadn’t planned on doing a podcast on this particular topic – that of sexual predators and sex abuse -- and for some of you, you may wonder what this has to do with mental illness and caregiving, and to that I’ll give a simple answer – A LOT. Having just watched for the second time the HBO...
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(Ep5) Happy Birthday: The Gift of Change
Funny how things change…sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. And whether or not we see that change as “better” or “worse” has everything to do with whether or not we’re even aware of the change AND how much we ourselves have actually changed – for better or worse. A storyteller at heart who...
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(Ep4) The Death of A Sibling: An Unexpected "IT"
A phone call came 5 years ago today announcing the unexpected end of my little sister’s life and of my own life as I had known it to be up until that point… A phone call with a childhood friend I hadn’t spoken to, let alone thought about in at least a decade, connected the past with the present……
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(Ep3) "You Have Arrived": New Year's Revelations
New Year's Revelations. Remembering the day my human GPS lost his way home...and realizing: We all lose our way. We all feel worthless. We all feel guilty. We all fall apart. We all are surrounded at times by madness. Finding the magic in those moments…embracing them…realizing that they are…
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(Ep2) Christmas and Crazy
Every Christmas, I can’t help but think of the irony. After all, both schizophrenia and the holidays involve retreat into a world of bizarre delusions: Santa Claus, flying reindeer, little elves, a virgin birth, angelic voices, Christmas miracles, peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men, and on and on....
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(Ep 1) I'm with Crazy: A Love Story
Welcome to Madness To Magic's podcast "I'm with Crazy: A Love Story" -- This show is for those of us who find ourselves surrounded by madness and wanting to find the magic within. We’re going to come together here as caregivers to those who have been diagnosed with a mental illness. Maybe it’s...